Who builds the walls?

Regular IRIN columnist and independent consultant to humanitarian organisations. A recovering aid worker, Paul has responded to crises in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq and the Indian Ocean Tsunami.

9 November 2016

You are a German, remembering the Berlin Wall. It seemed like it would last forever, but it was only 30 years before the pressure became too much and people spilled over it like water – but not before the fissure represented by the wall created deep and lasting divisions between the two halves of Germany. An icon of certainty, a dividing line between good and evil, although which was good and which was evil depended on which side of the wall you wanted to be on, of course. In the end everybody agreed though: the side that built the wall was on the wrong side of history.

You are a Palestinian, running a business in the West Bank. The wall – no, the “separation barrier” – is the most visible aspect of the occupation that has hit the Palestinian economy hard, but business has been good for you. You run a cement company, and if there’s one thing that's needed to build a separation barrier it's a lot of cement. So you sold Egyptian cement to Israel and walled yourself in, trying to avoid answering awkward questions about how your business was pulling in millions instead of rebuilding homes in Gaza.

You are an Iraqi, running for your life. There is nowhere left to run, and especially not to the south. That's where Saudi Arabia has built a wall that's like something out of the future: of course there's the girders and razor wire, but there's also the radar towers, movement sensors, thermal cameras, and a million and a half metres of fibre-optic cable connecting it all together. They say it's to protect the kingdom from ISIS, but they're building a similar wall against Yemen in the south, and eventually the entire country will be fenced in – all in the name of security.

You're a journalist, writing your next column. Every country you read about has justifications for their border walls, but they all seem to be suffering from a similar delusion to the fiction of quarantine that emerged during the Ebola crisis. It's a fantasy of exclusivity and distinction that is unattainable in a globalised world and completely fails to address the underlying drivers of migration. Despite this, nothing seems able to stop the trend: the increase in the number of border walls has been matched only by an increase in the number of articlesaboutborderwalls. Meanwhile, spare a thought for those stuck on the wrong side of these walls – although probably on the right side of history.

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